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| ASTUTR founder Jeet Dhindsa |
Seoul has become famous as a mecca for cosmetic surgery, but many medical tourists coming from abroad are still facing difficulties when searching online for information about hospitals, due to a lack of curated reliable information written in English.
ASTUTR founder Jeet Dhindsa helps international patients coming to Seoul for treatments to avoid these inconveniences.
After launching the online marketplace and licensed medical tourism facilitation service, My Seoul Secret, in March 2013, the entrepreneur from San Diego has been trying to make it easy for foreigners to find the right doctors in Korea.
"We specifically focus on English-speaking patients seeking to come to Korea for medical beauty treatments for the face, skin, hair, body and smile," he told The Korea Times in a recent email interview. "We create and publish clinic information in English and provide patients with support plans based on their needs."
Dhindsa is one of the first foreigners who received the D8-4 startup visa from the Korean government. Based on his career built at Kia Motors, Hitachi and DivX, he established the platform for foreigners who are considering getting plastic surgery here.
"My global PR and marketing experience at Kia and Hitachi helped me start a business in Korea. It's essential to have credibility in Korea, which usually comes from verifiable expertise or education," he said. "I chose medical tourism, especially beauty treatments, for my business item, because I'm passionate about solving a problem in this space that I experienced firsthand."
According to the founder, his company is currently going through an important period, because the COVID-19 pandemic made it completely rethink its business model to survive amid global travel restrictions.
He showed confidence about overcoming this crisis, saying his company has already pivoted into the import, export trade and commerce business sectors related to medical and beauty services that are not negatively impacted by COVID-19.
"Our goal is to focus and grow these new areas of business until the COVID-19 situation stabilizes and to consider focusing on this entirely for the long term because there is so much uncertainty about the future of medical tourism," he said. "Either way, I pride myself on being agile, flexible and trying the next challenge, which is making it through as a business during this pandemic."
